The Mondo-Esoterica Guide to

Ferdinando Baldi

Biography

Born in Italy in 1927, Ferdinando Baldi made his move into cinema in the 1950s with a series of now forgotten films, including the musical comedy Assi alla Ribalta (1954). His big break came in 1960 as the co-director of David e Golia (1960) - part peplum, part biblical epic, it starred the infamous Hollywood name Orson Welles. The sucess of this film saw Baldi strongly associated with the sword and sandal films for the next few years and he directed a variety of genre films, including I, Tartari (1961), again starring Welles and Son of Cleopatra (1964) with American actor Mark Damon. With Euro-exploitation in full swing, 1966 would be the busiest year of his career, helming Cameron Mitchell in a duet of pepla - Massacre in the Black Forest (1967) and In the Shadow of the Eagles (1966), the low budget spy film Suicide Mission to Singapore (1966) and most importantly, directing a young Franco Nero in the early Spaghetti Western, Texas Addio (1966), a genre in which Baldi would quickly become a familiar face.

Little Rita Nel West (1967) was his next project - a unique and very entertaining Spaghetti Western musical envisaged as a vehicle for the newly popular Italian singer Rita Pavone, it more importantly marked the Spaghetti Western debut of actor Terence Hill who would go on to be a genre mainstay (and indeed marked his first credit as 'Terence Hill'). The next year's Preparati la Bara! (1968) was a response (and semi-sequel) to Sergio Corbucci's classic Django (1966) and would be the Baldi's most 'normal' genre entry with Terence Hill in one of his few completely straight faced roles. He continued in the genre with Odia il prossimo tuo (1968) and Il Pistolero dell'Ave Maria (1969) - distinctively plot focused Westerns made more unusual by the addition of gladiatoral combat and Greek tragedy overtones respectively.

Baldi's unique genre takes nonewithstanding, by the beginning of the 1970s, the Spaghetti Western was in decline and quanity was far outweighing quality, however Baldi still managed to make something completely different - Blindman (1971). Inspired by the Japanese Zatôichi blind swordsman films, it was the first of some very unusual films that Baldi shot with the American actor Tony Anthony. After dabbling into euro-crime with the generic Sicilian Connection (1972), Baldi returned to the struggling Westerns with a duo of comedy titles, Carambola (1974) and Carambola, filotto... tutti in buca (1974) that unlike his creative earlier work were shameless rip-offs of the popular Bud Spencer/Terence Hill films. Something rather more original was the simply bizarre Get Mean (1976), starring Tony Anthony, that saw his 'stranger' character fighting Vikings and supernatural adversities in the Old West. A couple more generic dips into popular exploitation genres came with his giallo title Nove Ospiti per un Delitto (1977) and the 'Last House on the Left' inspired La Ragazza del Vagone Letto (1979). Come the 1980s Baldi reunited with Tony Anthony for a duo of suitably daft 3D adventure films, the post-Spaghetti Western Comin' at Ya! (1981) and Indiana Jones style adventure Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983). His final three productions were a trio of war films, the only memorable title being Mission Finale (1988) - uniquely, being funded by, and filmed in North Korea. He died in November 2007.

Although dabbling in most genres of Euro-exploitation cinema, Baldi is best remembered now for his various Spaghetti Western titles, which actively rank as some of the genre's best. Despite this, the director himself all but slipped into obscurity in the decades since, with very little being known about his life outside of his films.

DVD Reviews: Films directed by Ferdinando Baldi

Links

• IMDB entry

All text in this page written by Timothy Young - March 2007 - 2010.
Text from this review not to be used without authorization.

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